FOIA News: FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting Notice

The National Archives and Records Administration published a notice containing details for the next meeting of the FOIA Advisory Committee in today's issue of the Federal Register.  That meeting will be held on July 20, 2017, from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm.  Pre-registration to attend is required by 5:00 pm on July 18, 2017.

Court opinion issued June 8, 2017

Am. Ctr. for Law & Justice v. U.S. Dep't of State (D.D.C.) -- permitting plaintiff to amend Complaint to allege that agency has policy or practice of forcing requesters to sue to obtain FOIA responses. 

Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here.

Court opinions issued June 6, 2017

Schwartz v. DEA (2nd Cir.) (summary order)  -- affirming district court's decision that certain video footage of drug interdiction raid in Honduras was not protected by Exemption 7(E).  

Baldwin v. SBA (D.D.C.) -- dismissing pro se plaintiff's suit because he sought answers to questions and not access to agency records.

Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here.

FOIA News: Web app predicts FOIA request success

Will your FOIA request succeed? This new machine will tell you

By Benjamin Mullin, Poynter, June 9, 2017

Many journalists know the feeling: There could be a cache of documents that might confirm an important story. Your big scoop hinges on one question: Will the government official responsible for the records respond to your FOIA request?

Now, thanks to a new project from a data storage and analysis company, some of the guesswork has been taken out of that question.

Want to know the chances your public records request will get rejected? Plug it into FOIA Predictor, a probability analysis web application from Data.World, and it will provide an estimation of your success based on factors including word count, average sentence length and specificity.

Read more here.

FOIA News: NEA proposes new FOIA regulations

The National Endowment for the Arts published a notice of proposed rulemaking for new FOIA regulations in today's issue of the Federal Register.  These amendments are intended to implement changes required by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, as well as other updates.  Comments are due on or before July 10, 2017.

Court opinions issued June 5, 2017

Guidry v. Comey (11th Cir.) -- affirming district court's decision that FBI was not required to perform a "manual keyboard search" because it would have resulted in creation of new records rather than retrieval of existing records.

Canning v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- ruling that: (1) FBI performed an adequate search for requested records concerning third parties; and (2) agency properly withheld records pursuant to Exemption 1, 3, 6, 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E), except with respect to certain information that FBI previously released to public.

Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here.

FOIA News: Update on OGIS's Dispute Resolution Program

An Update on Our Dispute Resolution Program

Nat'l Archives & Records Admin., The FOIA Ombudsman, June 7, 2017

We’ve written before about the profound impact the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 has had on our workload, and that impact has only continued to grow.  Demand for our services has roughly quadrupled since the passage of the bill, while at the same time there are two open positions on the mediation team that we have been unable to fill. So how is our small staff approaching this big task, and what can our customers do to receive a response more quickly?

Read more here.

Court opinion issued June 2, 2017

White Arnold & Dowd P.C. v. Dep't of Justice (N.D. Ala.) -- finding that DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility properly relied on Exemptions 6 and 7(C) in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of any complaints against an Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Summaries of all opinions issued since April 2015 available here.

FOIA News: "Fight It with FOIA"

Fight It with FOIA: How Congress Can Respond to White House Attempts to Block Congressional Oversight

Andy Wright & Justin Florence, Just Security, June 5, 2017

The Trump White House took another step last week to weaken the checks and balances at the center of our constitutional system.  According to Politico, President Donald Trump’s “White House is telling federal agencies to blow off Democratic lawmakers’ oversight requests.”  As Politico reported, “a White House lawyer told agencies not to cooperate with such requests from Democrats, according to Republican sources inside and outside the administration.”

Politico’s reporting was reinforced by the release of a memorandum from the Trump Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to the White House Counsel entitled “Authority of Individual Members of Congress to Conduct Oversight of the Executive Branch.”  That memorandum states that “Individual members of Congress, including ranking minority members, do not have the authority to conduct oversight in the absence of a specific delegation by a full house, committee, or subcommittee.”

This is a brazen statement and one for which the OLC memo lacks support. 

Read more here.

Q&A: Where art thou, FOIA lawyer?

Q.   I know you cannot recommend anyone particular law firm or attorney but can you direct me as to what kind of practicing attorney to look for?  I'm completely clueless on where to start.

A.  FOIA attorneys often work as solo practitioners or at public interest organizations or small law firms.  Public interest groups are more likely to accept cases that implicate broad issues, as opposed to ones vindicating only the personal interests of the requester.  Many of the more experienced FOIA attorneys practice in the D.C. area, given the volume of litigation there.  You might want to browse the database of FOIA lawsuits on FOIA Project to get a sense of which attorneys are handling cases like yours.